Stay architecturally enlightened!

Here's a hot event for you New Yorkers this week: CLOG is officially launching its anticipated second issue, titled CLOG : APPLE, at Van Alen Books this Friday, February 17, 7pm.
— bustler.net

CLOG : APPLE showcases over 50 international contributors, including architects, designers, cartoonists, comedians, engineers and other industry leaders. Highlights include an examination of Steve Jobs's Eichler-designed childhood home; the evolution of Apple's store designs; its leading role in... View full entry »

... according to a person familiar with the plans who is bound by a nondisclosure agreement, Apple has already begun work on such a store in Santa Monica. Like the Peter Bohlin-designed Apple Store on New York's Upper West Side, it will have a tall, striking glass storefront...
— cnn.com

The Santa Monica store episode also illustrates Apple's unusually covert way of doing business. Interviews with almost two dozen people familiar with Apple Store negotiations say the Cupertino, California, company sometimes employs uncommon legal tactics, refuses to name itself in public... View full entry »

As his life wound down, and cancer claimed his body, his great passion was designing Apple’s new, three-million-square-foot headquarters, in Cupertino. Jobs threw himself into the details. “Over and over he would come up with new concepts, sometimes entirely new shapes, and make them restart and provide more alternatives,” Isaacson writes. He was obsessed with glass, expanding on what he learned from the big panes in the Apple retail stores.
— newyorker.com

“There would not be a straight piece of glass in the building,” Isaacson writes. “All would be curved and seamlessly joined. . . . The planned center courtyard was eight hundred feet across (more than three typical city blocks, or almost the length of three football fields), and... View full entry »

Permits issued by Catawba County show that the Cupertino, Calif., company has been approved to reshape the slope of some of the 171 acres of vacant land it owns on Startown Road, opposite the data center, in preparation of building a solar farm.
— charlotteobserver.com

“The best clients, to my mind, don’t say that whatever you do is fine,” Mr. Bohlin said last week, a few days after Mr. Jobs’s death. “They’re intertwined in the process. When I look back, it’s hard to remember who had what thought when. That’s the best, most satisfying work, whether a large building or a house.”
— nytimes.com

Though the planned building has a futuristic gleam — Jobs told the council "it's a little like a spaceship landed" — in many ways it is a doggedly old-fashioned proposal, recalling the 1943 Pentagon building as well as much of the suburban corporate architecture of the 1960s and '70s. And though Apple has touted the new campus as green, its sprawling form and dependence on the car make a different argument.
— latimes.com

Check this previous article for more information, images and comments from the community: Plans for new Apple HQ, by Norman Foster, officially released View full entry »

There is seemingly no limit to the manipulations that Apple store designers will make to ensure that the various elements of construction are aligned and pleasing to the eye. What looks like a simple retail storefront is actually a carefully designed, measured and constructed assemblage of glass, cement, metal and stone whose edges correspond.
— ifoapplestore.com

Steve Jobs has the right name for what's missing in America's economy. Does he also represent the way back to prosperity? We look at his record at Apple and its influence in the US and around the world.
— kcrw.com

KCRW's "To the Point" addresses Steve Jobs' attention to innovation and integration of design into Apple's business model, and how that can improve the state of today's horrible job market. View full entry »

Apple Inc.'s ailing chief executive Steve Jobs is officially stepping down from the helm of the company, an historic shift that hands the reins to chief operating officer Tim Cook. The company said Mr. Jobs submitted his resignation to the board of directors on Wednesday and "strongly recommended" that the board name Mr. Cook as his successor.
— online.wsj.com

If you love Apple and fine ingenious design as much as we do, you will be thrilled to hear that the beautiful, environmentally-aware Foster + Partners designed new Apple Campus is now one step closer to becoming a reality. The Cupertino City Council has just announced that Apple Inc. has submitted a development proposal for their new Apple Campus.
— openbuildings.com

We've just discovered Apple will be updating their iconic Cube structure at their midtown Manhattan retail location, replacing the current cube of 90 panes with just 15 massive, and I mean massive, pieces of glass... The slabs will be roughly 10 feet wide by a whopping 32 feet high, and held together using some sort of secret, proprietary connector that will reportedly be embedded within the glass itself, rather than being comprised of mere external clips.
— core77.com

Foxconn’s founder and chariman Terry Gou said the company will replace an unspecified amount workers with one million robots in three years. Foxconn is the Asian manufacturer that is responsible for many components inside of Apple, Sony, and Nokia’s devices.
— 9to5mac.com

For a related discussion check The Diminishing Returns of Technology. View full entry »

Our friends at OpenBuildings have just announced that their mobile app, already available for the iPhone, is now available for Android users. Go check it out explore the architecture around you! View full entry »

... in Rio de Janeiro, city officials are working with architects to integrate the notorious favelas with the rest of the city by new cable car lines and a walkway designed by famed architect Oscar Niemeyer designed. Rio's government and business community are also funding the Morar Carioca architectural competition that will hire 30 architects to build healthy homes, schools, and clinics for the city's poorest 200,000 residents.
— guardian.co.uk